AFM: Thank God For Nepotism. Aaron Woodley Preparing To DRONE

Oh, this makes me happy. Young Toronto director Aaron Woodley won a lot of fans around here with his unsettling debut feature Rhinoceros Eyes, a film that won a lot of critical acclaim but dropped off into limbo for a couple years when the production company that bankrolled it went bankrupt before they had the chance to actually release it. After that fiasco Woodley had little choice but to go off and do a straight up for-hire job and ended up directing Tennessee, a Mariah Carey vanity project currently in post production.

Enter the famous relative. Woodley's Rhinoceros Eyes comes by its disturbing qualities honestly, you see. He's the nephew of David Cronenberg and grew up hanging around uncle Dave's sets and now Cronenberg is stepping into his young protege's life as the producer of Woodley's next feature, Drone.

Based on the short story "King Bee" by T. C. Boyle, David Cronenberg presents an unsettling thriller about a young couple that, after years of hoping for a child of their own, unknowingly adopts an 11-year-old boy with a disturbing past. At first they seem like the perfect family, but soon the couple discovers their new son’s unsettling obsession with bees. As they uncover terrifying secrets from his childhood, the boy’s bee fascination spirals into uncontrollable violence and cruelty.

The film is currently in pre-production with a 2008 release targeted.